It is an innovation that works on purely economic grounds.
He was insinuating that Uber's innovation was cheap workers and then slurring these as "gypsies". It's easier to point out somebody's smear than it is to describe their misunderstandings related to innovation and domain knowledge, so my attack was on his method not his content.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locality_of_reference
Edit: You can't honestly downvote me based on a discussion from first principles of why something was innovative or can you? Sigh.
As a response to your original post, I would argue that the term gypsy is widely considered derogatory, and that I was not saying "how dare you call somebody a gypsy". I was saying that I felt that he was purposefully using it as a derogatory smear. I think it's fair to assume that he was using it as a smear and I think it's interesting that you wish to defend him by accusing me of the same thing that I accused him of.
You're perverting my intention which was to point out that he was normalising a smear as a negative externality to defending his anti-Uber beliefs and that this isn't okay.
The term gypsy is widely considered derogatory, but it is also widely used and accepted as normal by people unaware of that.[1] I don't think it's fair to assume pico was using it as a smear, but in the ignorant casual sense that people refer to illegal cabs as gypsy cabs, or say they got "gypped". Still insensitive, but I don't think he was trying to use a slur.
I'm not trying to defend his usage. You're right, it's not okay. But I think there is a distinction to be made in educating someone as to the history of a word vs. assuming they used it intentionally.
[1] In Conan O'Brian's documentary, there's a scene where an attendee of his show says to him something like "we got jew'd", to which Conan says "you know I'm part Jewish, and my producer over there is Jewish?". And the guy says "sorry...we got gypped" and then everyone carries on like it's normal. Meanwhile I was like "wait, that doesn't bother you in the exact same way?".
That's not Uber's innovation, since livery cars are not allowed to accept hailed fares in most places anyway. The only difference is an app instead of traditional voice.
I don't understand your point about gypsies; "gypsy cab" is a pretty widely understood term for an illegal, unlicensed cab. At least, Uber seems to think so: http://blog.uber.com/2013/08/18/stay-safe-avoid-gypsy-cabs/
